254 Gentlemen to Officers
those who tried to relieve suffering, and contempt for those on either side who
committed deliberate acts of barbarism.^26
Chicherin discusses freely the merib uf im.iividuai commander~, but retains
an implicit faith in the monarch. There is no hint in his diary of any critical
evaluation of the empire's institutions. He was surely not alone in responding
to his experiences on an ethical rather than a political plane. Did these officers'
attitudes change once they had crossed the Russian border into Poland, Ger-
many, and finally France? The question is controversial, as we have noted,
and it is worth stressing the point that Russian officers were not entirely
strangers to central Europe. Their experience went back at least as far as the
Seven Years War; later many had a chance to savour foreign amenities in
occupied Poland or in the Danubian principalities. Often their impressions
had been unfavourable, due in part to national or religious prejudice, but with
time attitudes changed. In 1805 F. N. Glinka described enthusiastically the
prosperity of the Austrian countryside on seeing it for the first time, and noted
the 'free rights' enjoyed by merchants and peasants.^27
In 1813 Chicherin was unimpressed by Poland ('the peasants here', he
wrote, 'live together with their cattle ... [and] everything speaks of poverty
and ignorance'), but the German states presented a more agreeable picture.
The towns were well built, with public fountains decorating the squares. Even
the poorest peasants had horses fit to draw a carriage; and our diarist recognized
that this relative prosperity had something to do with the superior political and
administrative arrangements under which they lived.^28 At Bunzlau he came
across a throng of cheerful, well-dressed farmers standing in front of the
town-hall, and to his surprise discovered that they were there in order to pay
their taxes. And yet
the love I bear my fatherland burns like a pure name, elevating my heart .... Here we
continually see the achievements of civilization, for they are evident in everything-in
the manner of tilling the fields, building houses, and in [popular) customs-yet never,
not even for a minute, would I wish to settle under an alien sky, in a land other than that
where I was born and where my forefathers were laid to rest.^2 ~
Ensign Nikita Murav'yev adopted a haughty attitude towards the burghers of
Hamburg whom he met, since they seemed to him unduly concerned with the
prompt payment of bills and similar mundane matters.^30
Thus Germany produced a complex and contradictory impact on the minds
of the more sensitive Russian officers. What they saw there elicited respect,
even admiration, and yet their prevailing emotions were shame and envy. The
26 Murav· yev[-Karskyl 'Zapiski', RA 4 ( 1886), p. 49, 5 ( 1886), p. 97; LOwenstern, Mlmoires, i.
328-9; Antonovsky, 'Zapiski', p. 200.
27 Glinka, Pis'ma, i. 6, 19, 54, 179.
2s Chicherin, Dnevnik, pp. 104, I08, 176-7, 264 (his anti-Polish sentiments may derive from
injuries suffered by his family during Kosciuszko's revoll).
29 Ibid., pp. 155, 177.
JO Druzhinin, Murav yev, p. 71.